


Cowboy Superheroes

by Imagination_Parade



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Humor, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 02:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4162785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagination_Parade/pseuds/Imagination_Parade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenkins had thought his life was ruined when the Librarian, the Guardian, and the boisterous Librarians-in-Training invaded his Annex and took over his quiet home. He had been convinced that it couldn’t get any worse. Then the baby that arrived a few years down the line grew into an energetic young boy who liked to spend his days running around the Library, and he learned how wrong he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cowboy Superheroes

Jenkins had thought his life was ruined when the Librarian, the Guardian, and the boisterous Librarians-in-Training invaded his Annex and took over his quiet home several years ago, and he hadn’t exactly been wrong. Life as he knew it had never been the same, even after the Library returned. They, all five of them, were loud; they were reckless; they never seemed quite capable of putting things back in their proper place. Jenkins had been convinced that it couldn’t get any worse.

Then the baby came.

It had been alright in the beginning. He was a quiet baby with attentive, doting parents, a watchful observer who seemed enchanted by learning and took everything in silently with his wide, brilliantly blue eyes.

But, as they say, all good things come to an end.

The quiet, well-behaved baby in question grew into an energetic little boy, and that boy was spending his afternoon running around the otherwise quiet Annex, a red superhero cape tied around his neck and his father’s cowboy hat on his head. He yelled as he ran, as children do, and paid no attention to the obstacles in his path. The small glass jars on the desk rattled but didn’t topple as the boy bumped into the edge. The globe near the Back Door shook on its axis as he stomped past it. When his outstretched arm barreled right through a pile of books (an act that, Jenkins noted, didn’t slow him down a bit), Jenkins sighed.

“Ms. Cillian!” he called.

“Yes?” Cassandra answered quickly, appearing from the adjacent room. She followed Jenkins’s eyes to the mess of books on the floor and, with a slight frown, said, “Oh.”

The little boy was still running around the table, arms stretched wide on either side of his body, and Cassandra waited at a corner, blocking his path. He stopped right in front of her and looked up at her with impish eyes.

“Did you knock these over?” she asked. He nodded slowly. “Can you help me pick them up, please?”

“Okay,” the boy agreed.

The boy handed Cassandra the books, one at a time, from the scattered pile on the floor, and Cassandra neatly stacked them back onto the desk.

“You really shouldn’t leave him unattended in the Library, Ms. Cillian,” Jenkins said.

“He’s in the Annex, and I’m one room away…and that room doesn’t even have a door!” Cassandra said in defense. “Besides, he’s not unattended. You’re here.”

“And how grateful we all are for that,” Jenkins muttered. “Spending too much time with Jones, that one…”

Cassandra looked at Jenkins with a look of false offense, pretending to be much more insulted than she actually was. Satisfied at her reaction, Jenkins turned back to his research. As soon as his gaze had shifted away from her, Cassandra playfully stuck her tongue out in his general direction. The little boy noticed and giggled, handing her the last book.

When the books were back in place, Cassandra scooped the little boy off the floor and sat him down on the Annex table with a grunt.

“ _Oof_ ,” she groaned as she sat him down, her hands resting close on either side of him. “We’re going to have to stop feeding you so much, little man.”

The little boy laughed again. Their heights now more or less even, Cassandra narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, you think it’s funny that you’re getting too heavy for me to pick you up?” she asked. The boy nodded. Getting back to the topic at hand, Cassandra said, “You know you’re not supposed to make a mess in here.”

“I know,” he said.

“So how did those books end up on the floor?” she asked.

“I have super strength!” the boy declared.

“Oh, you do?” she asked, playing along.

“ _Yeah_ , I’m a superhero! The books were a wall I had to burst through!”

“You’re a superhero and a cowboy?” she asked, pulling the hat on his head down over his eyes.

The little boy pushed the hat back up and said, “Since when do I hafta be only one thing?”

“Well, how about when you run around in here, you keep your arms like this?” Cassandra suggested, gently moving his arms down to his sides.

From across the room, Jenkins rolled his eyes. That wasn’t exactly the discipline he had wanted when he called Cassandra into the room.

“But I can’t fly like this!” the boy protested. He made his body as rigid as possible, sitting up straight and snapping his arms straight down against his sides.

“Okay, so instead of putting your arms straight out, fly like this,” Cassandra suggested, moving his hands straight up above his head. “It’s more aerodynamic anyway.”

“Air-a-what?” the little boy asked.

“You’ll fly faster!” Cassandra replied with excitement.

“Yay!”

The little boy started scooting towards the edge of the table, eager to get down. Cassandra picked him up and returned his feet to the floor with another slight grunt, and the superhero took off, running around the table again with his hands straight up in the air.

Cassandra smiled affectionately and then remembered. “Sweetie?” she said. The boy stopped and looked at her. “Watch out for Mr. Jenkins’s things.”

“Okay, Mama,” the boy said sincerely.

Satisfied with the progress that had been made, Jenkins stopped pretending to read while actually listening to Cassandra and began actually reading. Then the hollering started again. Jenkins sighed again and looked towards Cassandra with a disapproving glare. She was leaning against the table, watching the little boy run around the room, her face totally in love.

He knew right away that she wouldn’t be any help, but he couldn’t possibly get any work done under such circumstances.

“Ms. Cillian…” Jenkins started.

“Uh-uh,” Cassandra said, cutting him off. She had heard all of this before. “I know you think we don’t give him enough rules, but you’re just going to have to accept that we are going to encourage imagination and exploration, and there’s no better place in the world for him to do that than here, and as long as he stays out of your lab, and as long as he’s not hurting anyone…”

Jenkins knew, deep down, that he would eventually have to make peace with the fact that the young Librarians were not the sort of strict parents he would prefer to have for any child that was allowed to run free in his formerly quiet Annex, but before Cassandra could even finish her argument, the Back Door rumbled, and the little boy ran smack into the side of Flynn Carsen, causing both of them to end up in a tangled mess of limbs on the ground.

“Hey, what are we playing?” Flynn asked, barely missing a beat as he helped the child stand back up.

“Cowboy superheroes,” the boy said as Flynn straightened his jacket.

“Cool; do you need a bad guy?” Flynn asked.

“Okay!” he said, excitedly accepting the offer.

Flynn, with a matching yell, took off running. He reached the Annex doorway and called, “You’ll never catch me!” With an exaggerated cackle, he disappeared, Cassandra’s little boy hot on his heels.

Jenkins shot Cassandra another look, displeased at the now _two_ children playing while he was trying to work.

“It’s quiet now,” Cassandra said with a self-assured nod, gesturing around the room.

Jacob Stone, another new arrival from the Back Door, wandered around the Annex table, one arm naturally falling around Cassandra’s waist.

“Hey,” he said to Cassandra. “Jenkins questioning our parentin’ skills again?”

“He’s loud and knocked over a pile of books, so he’s just like Jones, and we are failures for letting him pretend to be a cowboy superhero in the Library,” Cassandra said with a playfully stern look on her face.

Stone grinned at the expression on his wife’s face, trying painfully hard not to laugh, before he simply shrugged. “Well, it is a day that ends in ‘y.’”

The hollering grew louder as the cowboy superhero himself and his new antagonist returned to the main room of the Annex. Stone quickly pulled Cassandra over towards the desk at which Jenkins sat, clearing the path around the table. The proud parents watched with amusement, and Jenkins sighed again.

“Don’t worry; he’ll exhaust himself in about twenty minutes,” Stone said.

“Your son or Mr. Carsen?” Jenkins asked.

Stone and Cassandra shared a look of contemplation. Cassandra nodded, and Stone shrugged again as he replied, “Probably both.”

Deciding twenty minutes was far too long to listen to extending screaming, Jenkins began collecting his research with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes.

“You will keep them out of my lab, right?” Jenkins inquired.

“That was the agreement,” Cassandra confirmed.

Jenkins retreated to his lab, but, much to his dismay, the sounds of the screaming in the other in the room were only muffled rather than muted as he shut the door. He briefly glanced at the calendar against the wall and heaved another sigh.

Nine more weeks still had to pass before the boy would vacate the Annex and spend his days in school. As far as Jenkins was concerned, they couldn’t pass quickly enough.


End file.
